Robotics

Dr. Asaro is Associate Professor in the School of Media Studies at the New School in New York City. He is the co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, and has written on lethal robotics from the perspective of just war theory and human rights. Dr. Asaro's research also examines agency and autonomy, liability and punishment, and privacy and surveillance as it applies to consumer robots, industrial automation, smart buildings, aerial drones and autonomous vehicles.

Ryan Calo is an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law and a former research director at CIS. A nationally recognized expert in law and emerging technology, Ryan's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Wired Magazine, and other news outlets. Ryan serves on several advisory committees, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Future of Privacy Forum.

Patrick Lin is the director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group, based at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he is also an associate philosophy professor. He has published several books and papers in the field of technology ethics, especially with respect to nanotechnology, human enhancement, robotics, cyberwarfare, space exploration, and other areas. He teaches courses in ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of technology, and philosophy of law. Dr.

The Center for Internet and Society once again participated in National Robotics Week, organized by the Robotics Caucus of the U.S. Congress and leading robotics companies, schools, and organizations. We hosted a Robot Block Party & Job Fair today at VAIL. This event showcased cutting edge robotics technology from throughout the Bay Area.

I’ll begin that discussion with a basic legal question: Who drives an automated vehicle? The answer might be no one—a truly driverless car in the legal and technical senses. It might be a natural person—the individual owner (if there is one), the occupant (ditto), or the individual who initiates the automated operation (ditto again). It might be a company—the corporate owner, the service provider, or the manufacturer. Depending on the context, it might even be some combination of these possibilities.

Six state representatives in Hawaii have introduced a bill (HB 2238) that would direct that state's "director of transportation, in consultation with the insurance commissioner and the examiner of drivers of each county," to "adopt rules in accordance with chapter 91 providing for the operation of autonomous motor vehicles on highways within the State." This follows developments in Nevada and Florida.

I am proud to say that I helped found the Robot Block Party in Silicon Valley. Now in its fifth year, the event brings together industry, academia, and the hobbyist community to demo robots in celebration of National Robotics Week. We held the first one in Paul Brest Hall at Stanford Law School. The second, third, and fourth Robot Block Parties took place nearby at the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab (where Stanford University develops driverless cars). Each event drew at least a thousand visitors.

Ever since the 1930s, self-driving cars have been just 20 years away. Many of those earlier visions, however, depended on changes to physical infrastructure that never came about, such as special roads embedded with magnets.

“Today we are well underway to a solution of the traffic problem.”1This claim, made by Robert Moses in 1948, is as true today as it was then. Which is to say, not at all. In the middle of the last century, the preferred solution to “the traffic problem” was more cement: new highways, bridges, and lanes.

"Ryan Calo, a technology law professor at the University of Washington who edited the new Roadmap for Robotics report, argues that the government should even consider creating a Federal Robotics Commission that could help inform policy with deep technical expertise and review computational systems to make sure they’re working within the bounds of the law.

"“The government itself is not acting as a repository of expertise here,” said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington and expert on technology policy. “I worry quite a bit that government will over-rely on experts from industry because they don’t have their own internal knowledge.”"

"The conference was organized by UW professor Ryan Calo. He said there’s a role for regulation of robot use in politics to influence elections or deceptive robots used for defrauding people.

“Imagine an artificial intelligent girlfriend that was really just everything you ever wanted and knew everything you thought you wanted, but one of the things it helps you to do is purchase only from the clients of the company that made it,” Calo said.

This essay, written as a response to Ryan Calo's valuable discussion in "Robotics and the Lessons of Cyberlaw," describes key problems that robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) agents present for law.

"“How do you handle liability? Who do we hold responsible?” asks University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo, who specializes in cyber law and robotics. “We need to use the law to create the proper incentives.”"

"Laws has to keep up with new technologies, and Ryan Calo has his eye on robot legalities, particularly with respect to policy and ethics.

For example, Calo was quoted in this New York Times piece titled "When Driverless Cars Break The Law." Spoiler alert: it's complicated. "Criminal law is going to be looking for a guilty mind, a particular mental state — should this person have known better? If you’re not driving the car, it’s going to be difficult," he said."

But not every kind of robotmaker should be responsible for its creations. Ryan Calo of University of Washington Law School argues that to foster start-up-style innovation in home and service robots, the platforms have to be open, meaning that any app developer can write a program that teaches your floor-mopping robot to clean windows too — much as smartphones have been taught to do more than make calls. The fault for any hiccups would be with the app developer or the user.

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The motion under debate will be:“Should there be an absolute ban on autonomous systems capable of using lethal force?” Two key speakers will argue for and against the motion, and respond to each other’s presentation. This will be followed by a discussion session with the audience, and a public vote.

The program committee for We Robot: Getting Down To Business invites you to join us for the second annual robotics and the law conference to take place April 8 and 9 at Stanford Law School. This year’s event is focused on the immediate commercial prospects of robotics and will include panels and papers on a wide variety of topics, including:

It is not hard to imagine why robots raise privacy concerns. Practically by definition, robots are equipped with the ability to sense, process, and record the world around them. Robots can go places humans cannot go, see things humans cannot see. Robots are, first and foremost, a human instrument. And after industrial manufacturing, the principal use to which we’ve put that instrument has been surveillance.

Are we ready for cars and trucks that don't need us? Automakers, universities, and others are researching a range of advanced automation technologies that may make so-called autonomous driving possible. This class asks whether driverless vehicles are street legal, who is responsible when they crash, what trade-offs they require -- and, in each case, who gets to decide.

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The University of Washington School of Law is delighted to announce a public workshop on the law and policy of artificial intelligence, co-hosted by the White House and UW’s Tech Policy Lab. The event places leading artificial intelligence experts from academia and industry in conversation with government officials interested in developing a wise and effective policy framework for this increasingly important technology.

It is not hard to imagine why robots raise privacy concerns. Practically by definition, robots are equipped with the ability to sense, process, and record the world around them. Robots can go places humans cannot go, see things humans cannot see. Robots are, first and foremost, a human instrument. And after industrial manufacturing, the principal use to which we’ve put that instrument has been surveillance. This talk explores the various ways that robots implicate privacy and why, absent conscientious legal and design interventions, we may never realize the potential of this transformative technology.

From robots that help perform delicate medical procedures to NASA's rovers, the latest high-tech machines were in the spotlight last week at Stanford's Robot Block Party. The event, sponsored by the Stanford Program in Law, Science, and Technology, was part of National Robotics Week. It was a "celebration of robotics" designed to get people interested in them, said Ryan Calo, a residential fellow at the Law School who helped organize the event.